Free software is simply software that respects our freedom — our freedom to learn and understand the software we are using. Free software is designed to free the user from restrictions put in place by proprietary software, and so using free software lets you join a global community of people who are making the political and ethical assertion of our rights to learn and to share what we learn with others.

Apple v. Samsung: a patent battle with freedom as the collateral damage

GPL violations are still pretty common, you know?

Hampshire College distributes free software bundle to all incoming students

Trademarks and free software

LibrePlanet featured resource: Free Software Courses

GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 12 new GNU releases!

Richard Stallman's speaking schedule

Other FSF and free software events

Thank GNUs!

Take action with the FSF

Stop software patents from muscling in on Europe

From September 19th:

If the corrupt European Patent Office succeeds in imitating America's software patent system, it will be a disaster for software development. Join April, the FSF's French ally, in calling for strong legislation against software patents in Europe.

The patent legislation threatening Europe is part of a treaty called the unitary patent. If you'd like to learn more about it, we direct you towards the End Software Patents campaign's recent post on the issue.

Save the Web from software patents

From September 30th:

PersonalWeb's software patent suit against Github and others threatens the freedom of the Web. In order to make sure that the Web can remain a free and accessible space for everyone, we need to rid ourselves of all the patents that threaten its viability. We need to end software patents.

Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory

From September 21st:

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

While the Free Software Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help staying up to date with new and exciting free software projects.

To help, join volunteer leader Andrew Engelbrecht on most Fridays from 2pm to 5pm EDT (18:00 to 21:00 UTC). Meetings take place in the #fsf channel on irc.gnu.org, and usually include a handful of regulars as well as new volunteers. Everyone's welcome.

Hi, I'm Zak (one of the new campaigns managers)

From September 24th:

I started three weeks ago and I'm mostly in the swing of things, though I'm still learning a lot every day. My latest milestone has been putting together this newsletter. Here's an introductory blog post about me:

Web host Dreamhost pledges to quadruple its members' donations to the FSF

Apple v. Samsung: A patent battle with freedom as the collateral damage

From September 21st:

In their struggle to control software markets, large companies are hoarding software patents and finding more and more draconian ways to enforce them. Many patent-holding companies have multi-million dollar legal teams that can blow a well-meaning project out of the water if they have the slightest reason to believe it is infringing, even by accident. This situation presents a growing threat to innovative free software projects that draw code and inspiration from many sources. It's our responsibility to protect the free software community by demanding an end to the oppressive practice of software patents.

Hampshire College distributes free software bundle to all incoming students

From September 30th:

Hampshire student and FSF campaigns organizer Kira shares the success of their ambitious project to help fellow students get started with free software. The achievements of Kira's organization, LibrePlanet/Students for Free Culture, is exciting and reproducible outside of Hampshire. Kira provides suggestions to help other students realize the same changes at their schools.

Trademarks and free software

From September 2nd:

Benjamin Mako Hill argues that trademarks, even those created with the best intentions, can still harm a project and limit its benefit to society. Though there is a natural urge to prevent others from misrepresenting our work, we need to limit these efforts to what is productive.

LibrePlanet featured resource: Free Software Courses

Every month on LibrePlanet, we highlight one resource that is interesting and useful -- often one that could use your help.

This month, we're featuring the Free Software Courses page. This course catalog, which includes offerings from multiple institutions, is a starting point for people who want to bring their knowledge of free software systems to an academic or professional level. If you've taken classes that focus on free software, you can guide others to join you by listing the courses on the page. We hope this page enables more software engineers to use free software to its full potential.

This month we welcome John Meinel as the new maintainer of GNU Bazaar, aka bzr. We also welcome Gary Vaughan as the new maintainer of GNU Zile, in addition to being co-maintainer of GNU libtool and GNU m4. Many thanks to Reuben Thomas, Zile's original author, for contributing the program (and much else).

Take action with the FSF

Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's work. You can contribute by joining at http://www.fsf.org/join. If you're already a member, you can help refer new members (and earn some rewards) by adding a line with your member number to your email signature like:

The FSF is also always looking for volunteers (http://www.fsf.org/volunteer). From rabble-rousing to hacking, from issue coordination to envelope stuffing -- there's something here for everybody to do. Also, head over to our campaign section (http://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents, DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.

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